The Great and Terrible

by Chris Stewart

  Teancum nodded sadly. “Parts of Israel. Most of Gaza. Cities in Iran. Other places throughout the Middle East.”

  The father closed his eyes as he remembered. He and Teancum had walked those parts of the earth together. He knew what things were like there, having seen the devastation for himself. Entire regions of the mortal world smoldered in radioactive ash. Millions were surrounded by hunger and death and despair. Sin and depravity were so overwhelming there was hardly hope at all. “How could they do it?” he asked. “I simply don’t understand.”

  Teancum thought before he answered. “Let’s not blame them all,” he said. “There are many good still left among them. And that is true everywhere. Whatever country or region you chose to take me to, I could find you good and righteous people living there.”

  The father brought his hands up to his face, then slowly shook his head. It was just too painful to see the suffering and too frustrating to know it could have been avoided if the people had only seen, if they had only cared.

  Teancum watched him thoughtfully for a moment, then touched him on the shoulder. “You’ve forgotten, my good friend, what it was like to live here. You’ve forgotten how powerful the voice of Lucifer can be. You’ve forgotten the pull of temptations, the anger, the lust and greed and weakness of the natural man. Your memory has been washed—although just a bit, perhaps—of the intensity of the experience, which is fine. Mortal life can be so acute, so severe and powerful, sometimes it’s hard for us to remember how difficult it really was. And the Dark One is even more dangerous now than he was before.”

  The father shook his head. “No, Teancum, I haven’t forgotten. Not a moment. Not an hour. Every day, every emotion, every joy and every fear, every lesson learned is branded upon me. You know we don’t forget.”

  Teancum didn’t answer for a moment. “I don’t suppose we do,” he said at last.

  The father shook his head again. “No, we don’t forget.” Then he nodded to the mortals huddled in the tents below. “They think that we forget them, though.”

  Teancum smiled, his eyes shining. “A bit of irony, I suppose. I mean, how could we forget them? How could we forget our own children? We love them now more than we ever did, for our love is more perfect, which makes it more powerful.”

  “If only they knew. If only they believed. If they would just try to listen for us, then they might hear our tender words.”

  Teancum folded his arms, his face relaxed. It was as if he knew a secret that he wasn’t telling. “They are so busy,” he answered carefully. “There are so many battles for their time. It’s hard for them, just like it was hard for you and me.”

  The father thought a long moment as he studied the grassy cemetery that fell below him to the west. “So you think that I can help him.”

  “Yes, I know you can.”

  The father hesitated. He was a younger spirit than Teancum and not as sure.

  Teancum watched the uncertainty in his eyes. “He’s your kin,” he reminded him. “The earthly bonds between you are deep, the heavenly bonds even more powerful.” He moved his head to the side and pointed to the west, almost laughing. “And remember this, my friend: his mother is out there praying. You’ve heard her many prayers. They are so strong and faithful, they almost drive me to my knees. Could you deny such faith?” He shook his head. “I don’t think either of us can.”

  Chapter One

  Offutt Air Force Base

  Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Command

  Eight Miles South of Omaha, Nebraska

  The room was silent. They were alone. The two men stared at each other before one of them whistled quietly, a nervous habit he’d picked up as a kid, then swallowed and forced a smile. The air in the command center was cool but arid as the desert, the underground cooling systems breathing out purified, bone-dry atmosphere. The digital clocks on the wall behind them showed the local time in a dozen locations around the world: Moscow, Berlin, Jerusalem, New York, Hawaii, and a handful of others.

  Local time: 0314. A little less than four hours until sunrise. Above the underground complex, the night was dark. To conserve energy, but mostly to avoid highlighting their capabilities to the local population, the base commander had ordered all lights extinguished after sunset. There were already hundreds of civilians at the gates. No reason to make it thousands. The time for riots and gunfights along the base security perimeter would come soon enough without publicizing the fact that the military had electricity. And water. And communications. And pretty much everything else.

  Not the kind of things they needed to advertise right now.

  But in the end, it wouldn’t matter. If things didn’t change soon, the base would run out of energy and supplies just like the local population.

  Brucius Marino, the Secretary of Defense, was exhausted. He hadn’t slept at all in almost thirty hours, and he’d had little more than a couple of hours of sleep during the two days previous to that. He knew he had to find some time to rest; his mind was slow as molasses and he found himself sometimes stumbling on both his feet and his words. Worse, he slipped into microsleep for fifteen or thirty seconds at the most awkward times—while talking to a subordinate, shaving, eating, listening to a security brief. He couldn’t read a paragraph without slipping away.

  What he needed was a shower. And a hot meal. And twenty hours of sleep.

  But not right now. Not until he said good-bye.

  This was important. Maybe the most important thing they would do up to this point.

  He stared across the table. There wasn’t a man in the world he trusted more than the man sitting opposite him. And this was the last time he would see him. Somehow they both knew.

  James Davies, the FBI Director, kept his eyes low. He too was exhausted, his black eyes melting into the dark skin above his cheekbones, his curly hair cut to a stubble of black and gray. The portable table, mounted on rubber wheels, moved under the weight of the Secretary of Defense’s heavy arms. The military infirmary was all chrome and tile and white cement walls, causing their voices to echo, which created a stiff environment that magnified the awkwardness of it all.

  “How does it feel?” Brucius asked.

  James turned his head and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing at the strain. “Feels like I swallowed a tennis ball.”

  Brucius flinched.

  “If it hurt like that going down, I can’t imagine what it’s going to feel like coming back up again.”

  Brucius winced again and subconsciously swallowed. “It’s going to be okay, though?”

  James clenched his teeth, then rubbed his tongue across the new cap on his molar and nodded.

  They were silent another moment.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Brucius said.

  “I know that, sir.”

  Brucius shook his head. “I’m not sir, to you, James. I never will be.”

  “You’re the president, sir.”

  “Not right now. Not yet. We’ve been through this.”

  “You are the president, sir. That isn’t in dispute. That’s why I’m doing this, you know. As much affection as I might have for you, this isn’t about you or me or friendship. This is something different. More important.” He nodded toward the hallway. “That’s why all of us are doing this. It’s about the presidency. The country. It’s about the Constitution versus chaos. It’s the only thing we can do.”

  Brucius didn’t answer.

  James broke into a smile. “I love you, Brucius, you know that, but this is much more important than a single man.”

  There were footsteps in the hallway, the sound of clicking heels moving past, and they fell silent as they listened, both of them lost in their own thoughts.

  “We made a mistake.” Brucius had a far-off look on his face as he spoke, his mind reflecting back. He had a sense of pain about him—a father reflecting on the passing of his child. He appeared to be racked with torment. What had happened to his country? What might he have done!

  J
ames sucked his teeth and waited.

  “We should have seen it coming,” Brucius continued.

  Again, James didn’t answer.

  “We should have known.”

  “What are you talking about, Mr. Secretary?”

  “The president we elected. He was good and smooth and said all the right things. But he didn’t love his country, at least not like you and I do. Not like our fathers. Not like our grandfathers. He saw our country as not that much different from all the others, not much better, in some ways maybe worse. He saw our sins and determined they precluded us from any further greatness. It wasn’t that he had an evil heart, he just couldn’t see or didn’t choose to see the good that was our country.”

  “Hmmm,” was all James offered.

  Brucius Marino leaned over and ran his hand over his head, then rested his elbows on his knees and looked up. “It allowed him to surround himself with men like he was, only worse. Men who didn’t trust their own people. Men with lust for power. And power, like cocaine, left them unsatisfied, always aching for more. But it was us as much as anyone. We’re the ones who elected him. We’re the ones who put him there.”

  “He paid a price for his folly.”

  Brucius thought of the nuclear attack over Washington that had killed the president and answered, “Yes, he did.”

  They fell silent another moment. Outside, a powerful storm was raging: enormous black clouds, billowing and boiling, dark and full. Thunderous rain. Constant spiderwebs of blue-white lightning. Something in the atmosphere had been thrown completely out of whack—whether from the EMP attack or the nuclear fallout, no one quite knew. Maybe it was from both. Maybe Mother Nature was just ticked off, but she was birthing storms now that billowed with more fury than they’d ever seen before. A particularly close bolt of lightning CRAAACKED and the thunder followed instantly, causing the air to sizzle with the smell of burning sulfur. Both men stopped and stared at the window. It was almost as dark as midnight outside.

  “You get in and get out,” Brucius Marino said after the echoes from the frightening thunder had rolled past. “You understand me, James. Don’t you go and be a hero. I need you here. I’m not being protective or patronizing; it’s the simple truth. You talk about doing this for our country—well, this is what your country needs for you to do: Complete this mission but stay alive! You’re no good to any of us dead.” The Secretary leaned forward, his weary eyes boring into the other man. “I mean it, James. If you consider me the president, then consider this an order. The country will need your loyalty and expertise. She will need your truthfulness and intelligence. You do this and get out. Do not get yourself killed!”

  James Davies stared at his hands, large, rough, and thick-fingered. His father’s hands. His grandfather’s hands. The inherited hands of a former slave. A sudden chill ran through him. A premonition? A warning? He didn’t know. He looked across the table at his best friend, his mind drifting back. “Do you remember the first time we ever met?” he asked.

  Brucius stared at him. “Are you kidding? I can’t remember anything that happened even a month ago. That was back in college. It seems like another world.”

  James rubbed his hands across his eyes. “I remember it like it was yesterday. We were sitting in a physics lab. There were, I don’t know, forty or fifty kids, all of them as arrogant and self-absorbed as we were, all of them certain they were going to be the next billionaire or president or power-crazy CEO. You don’t fill a classroom at Yale with the weak in intellect or ego. An hour into the lab I looked down the row and caught your eye. You stared at me, then motioned to the back door. We picked up our books and headed out . . .”

  “There was a gym across the hallway.” Brucius remembered now. “We ended up shooting hoops.”

  “Yeah. You were taller by four inches, but I could still dunk on you.”

  “I was jealous of your money,” Brucius said.

  “I was jealous of your determination,” James countered. “The fact you were making it on your own.”

  “Your dad was paying your way through college. He bought you that cool car,” Brucius pointed out.

  “Cool! Are you kidding! That British Triumph was nothing but a piece of junk.”

  “It was a chick magnet.”

  “The sucker never ran,” James complained. “I spent more time on the bus than any poor black kid in Memphis.”

  They both fell silent, smiling, the memory deep and full.

  “I’ll always remember,” James repeated, his voice low and monotone. He was talking to himself now. “I looked down the row of kids and saw you. You looked at me. And from that moment, before we had ever even spoken, I knew that you were going to be my best friend.”

  “It was a long time ago,” Brucius answered. “But that has proven true.”

  “You know what else? Out of that whole group of kids, out of that entire bunch of snot-nosed, brilliant, ambitious, arrogant, give-it-to-me-because-I-deserve-it Yale freshman, I don’t think anyone would have predicted we would end up where we are. We never would have guessed it. Yet . . .” he motioned to their surroundings, “here we are.”

  “Audaces fortuna iuvat,” Brucius smiled. Fortune favors the bold.

  “Ab incunabulis,” the FBI Director answered. From the cradle.

  This made Brucius laugh. “I’ve got a better one: Age. Fac ut gaudeam.”

  James had to think, translating in his head. “Go ahead. Make my day.” He wet his lips and laughed. “Gotta love that one.”

  “I think it’s more appropriate than what you said. I’m pretty sure the only useful thing I did in my cradle was bawl. I don’t think that I was predestined to—”

  James cut him off. “Not predestined. Ordained. And yes, I think you were. I think we both were. We find ourselves here, at this critical juncture in time, not out of happenstance or luck or some perfect storm of time and circumstance. It certainly wasn’t inevitable, but I do think there is a purpose and plan to it all.”

  Brucius didn’t answer for a moment. “Maybe,” was all he said.

  “Not maybe, Brucius. What I said was true.”

  “Maybe. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how we got here; all that matters is what we do with this moment we’ve been given. All that really matters is what we do with right now.”

  James looked around as if caught in some internal debate, then turned back to his friend. “I had an interesting experience about a year ago. It’ll sound crazy, and I’m not sure you’ll understand, but I want you to hear it. I know you’re not a Christian—despite my best efforts to save you,” James gave him a wary smile, “but I know your heart. So I want you to listen to what I’m going to tell you and really try to understand.”

  Brucius waited, his face unchanging.

  “Last Christmas, Emily and I went to a Christmas concert at the National Cathedral. The Mormon Choir was there. They’re pretty good, you know. During the concert, they sang a song that harmonized with ‘Silent Night.’ In the background they sang these words: ‘This is a time of peace. This is a time of joy.’

  “As I heard those words, a feeling came over me, a certain assurance, as if a voice were speaking to me from God. It was a time for joy. It was a time for peace. It was the great breath of air before the deep plunge, the great calm of peace before the dark and deadly storm. It was the final moment of quiet, the deep sigh of hope before the last cage was opened to the darkness of a stark and evil world. The Lord’s angels were waiting to sound their trumps, but evil angels were also waiting to unleash their hate upon the world.

  “And as they sang, I started wondering, how long will this last peace last? Now we know. It is over. How deep will be the darkness? Only time will tell. But on that night, in that cathedral, the impression was so clear. Strengthen yourself, the voice whispered to me. Prepare for what is true. The time of darkness is coming. Find joy in this day. Live, love, and be happy! But also know He is preparing His kingdom, and soon He will appear. Are you willing to h
elp Him? Are you worthy of His cause? The battle lines are drawing. Which side are you on? No one can stand on the sidelines, hoping the storms will pass them by. This battle will sweep every generation and every people on earth—the young and the old, the cowards and the true. So prepare now while He gives you this final moment of peace. Prepare now for the darkness that is building before the final storm . . .”

  James trailed off. He didn’t know any better how to explain it. And he didn’t know why it was so important to him that Brucius understand.

  Brucius looked at him awkwardly. “I don’t . . . you know, James, I’m just not that kind of guy. I left the church when I was just an altar boy. It killed my family and the local priest, but it just was not my thing. I wanted to believe. I still want to believe. But there were too many holes, too many things that didn’t make sense. Still, I don’t begrudge you your faith or beliefs. In fact, I’m envious. And, in my own way, I’m still searching. But I have to be honest with you when I say I just don’t see too much in all of that. This thing that happened to you in the cathedral, this premonition or whatever, I don’t doubt it for a minute; I just don’t think the same thing will ever happen to me. And I don’t know that it means too much anyway.

  “To me, this thing is pretty simple. Some guys have stolen the presidency. I’m going to round them up and kill them. You’re going to help me. Everything else is purely smoke.”

  James looked deeply at his friend, thought a long moment, then nodded.

  “You okay with that?” Brucius asked.

  James stood up from the table.

  Brucius pushed to his feet and leaned into him. “I mean what I told you,” he repeated. “Don’t take any chances. Get in, get out, and get back here. Simple as that. You got me?”

  James watched him another moment. Did Brucius understand at all? Maybe not. Probably not. But, one day, James knew he would.

  Brucius watched his friend’s cheeks protruding as he moved his tongue around his teeth. “Don’t break it,” he told him protectively. “No good for you to starting throwing up right here.”